We firmly believe that the financial industry has the best use cases for artificial intelligence plus and will be a strategic focus for new quality productive forces. OneConnect will continue to empower the upgrade and transformation of the financial industry with technological innovation focused on serving premium plus customers and product improvement and satisfy the core demand of financial institutions for various business productivity improvements. We also aim to develop products featuring new quality and productive forces such as AI voice assistant and omni-channel agent solution for us to improve efficiency and service, reduce costs and risk for financial institutions. Thank you. [Foreign Language] Next, I will hand it over to Mr. Luo to give you a detailed introduction of OneConnect’s financials in Q4 and full year 2023.
Luo Yongtao: Thank you, Shen Chong. Good evening, everyone. I’m pleased to present our financial results for the year of 2023. We have accomplished a solid financial performance marked by significant progress in reducing losses. This achievement aligns with our strategic objectives of obtaining midterm profitability. While it is true that we encountered a decline in revenue over the past few months, it’s during challenging periods like this that we have the opportunity to exhibit our resilience and capacity to adapt. We are steadfast in the commitment to exploring new opportunities, evaluating our existing processes and implementing necessary adjustments to position ourselves for renewal growth in the future. Now let’s turn to our financial results.
In 2023, we delivered revenue of RMB 3.67 billion, decreased by 17.8% compared to the last year, primarily due to a decline in transaction-based and support revenue. Revenue generated from third-party customers decreased by 11.5% to CNY1.31 billion. We are glad to see gross margin of 2023 was 36.8% and improved by 0.2 percentage points on a year-over-year basis. Non-IFRS gross margin was 40.3%, improved by 0.2 percentage points as well. We are thrilled to see net loss attributable to shareholders was CNY363 million as compared to CNY872 million for the prior year. Net margin attributable to shareholders improved by 9.7 percentage points to negative 9.9% compared to negative 19.5% for the prior year. Now let’s turn to our revenue mix by customer.
In 2023, our third-party revenue was CNY1.31 billion, contributing 35.6% of total revenue. Third-party revenue growth remains a key focus of our second stage strategy. We will continue to seek opportunities that align with our growth objectives, fueling further expansion of our third-party revenue streams. Revenue from Lufax decreased 41.4% to CNY269 million and contributed 7.3% of our total revenue. The revenue decline from Lufax was mainly due to Lufax’s business operation optimization, resulting in lower demand for our business origination and risk management services. Revenue from Ping An Group decreased 17.2% to CNY2.09 billion and contributed 57% of the total revenue. Revenue decline from Ping Group was primarily due to a decline in transaction volume, such as operational support and risk management products.
The services provided to Ping An Group are core technology solutions, which have been deeply embedded into Ping An Group’s daily operations. Looking ahead, we will continue to fully support Ping An Group’s business reform and look for new cooperations. Moving on to revenue mix by business type. Implementation revenue decreased by 3.2% on a year-over-year basis to CNY835 million, mainly due to the lower revenue contribution from new customers as financial institutions recovering from the pandemic still takes time. Revenue from business origination services decreased by 65.6% year-over-year to CNY132 million, primarily due to declined transaction volumes and our proactive actions of phasing out low-value products in the digital banking segment.
Revenue from risk management services decreased by 22.8% year-over-year to CNY320 million mainly due to reduced transaction volume in banking loan solutions because of lower-than-expected banking activities. Revenue from operation support services decreased by 24.5% on a year-over-year basis to CNY861 million which was primarily caused by reduced demand from auto insurance customers and banking customers. Revenue from cloud services platform decreased by 5.3% on a year-over-year basis to CNY1.25 billion. Revenue for post-implementation support and other services decreased by 47% year-over-year to CNY127 million. The decline was primarily due to lower demand for auto ecosystem services. Revenue from POB Virtual Banking business in Hong Kong increased by 37% to CNY146 million as compared to last year.
As you can see, we have been diligent in identifying and improving underperforming areas of our business and are focused on enhancing revenue structure. We will remain committed to integrating our product mix and adopting a stable and sustainable stock-based charging model. Let’s turn to revenue mix by product sectors. Gamma platform sector, the focus of product innovation in recent years contributed to the biggest chunk of our revenue, declined 4.8% in 2023 to CNY1.92 billion and accounted for 52.4% of total revenue. The decline was mainly caused by reduced transaction volume of our open platform products. Digital banking sector, which accounted for 25.7% of total revenue, reduced by 35.3% on a year-over-year basis to CNY942 million. That was mainly caused by a reduction in transaction volume of our business origination and risk management services, which are related to our initiatives to phase out lower-value products and the impacts from the lower-than-expected banking activities.
Digital insurance sector, which accounted for 17.9% of total revenue, decreased by 25.5% to CNY657 million in 2023, primarily due to reduced demand in auto ecosystem services. In each sector, we phased out products with low margins. Products with no technological value-added features as well as those with limited potential for the growth in the future. In addition, virtual banking sector, as I just mentioned before, accounting for 4% of total revenue. Premium Plus customers. In 2023, the number of Premium Plus customers decreased to 208 as compared with 221 for the same period last year, primarily due to fewer customers in digital banking sector. We believe as we continue to advance our initiatives, we expect our customer base further spend and more Premium Plus customers, we use our products and services.
Now let’s take a look at the gross margin. We are glad to see our gross margin — our gross profit reach CNY1.35 billion in 2023. Gross margin improved by 0.2 percentage points to 36.8%. On non-IFRS basis, gross margin reached 40.3% as we continued our product integration and standardization. In the whole year of 2023, the continued efforts in product integration and delivery efficiency, together with execution on quality growth, helped improve our gross profit margin. We will stick to that strategy and continue the endeavor of achieving higher margins. Moving on to expenses and net loss attributable to shareholders. You can see that we are well on track to our midterm breakeven target. First of all, our research and development expenses came down 32.6% to CNY955 million, from CNY1.42 billion in the same period of last year.
As a percentage of revenue, it decreased to 26%. In 2023, our continued investment in technological innovation and organizational capability remains unchanged. As our products were upgraded and integrated, we further improved our product delivery efficiency. Looking ahead, we will keep investing in research and development at a more measurable and suitable pace to enhance our product competitiveness in the market. Our sales and marketing expenses decreased 33% to CNY275 million compared with CNY411 million in 2022. The improvement in sales and marketing expenses mainly benefited from our continued efficiency improving efforts and a decrease in marketing and advertising activities. Our general and administrative expenses decreased 39% to CNY505 million from CNY825 million in the prior year.
As a percentage of revenue, it decreased to 13.8% from 18.5%. The decline in general and administrative expenses was primarily due to stringent cost control measures and reduced labor cost. It is worth mentioning again that under a challenging business environment, our net loss attributable to shareholders improved substantially to negative CNY363 million from negative CNY872 million last year, and its corresponding net margin to shareholders improved 9.6 percentage points to negative 9.9%. This achievement reflects our commitment to enhancing our financial health and demonstrates the effectiveness of our actions on our journey towards profitability. The next page demonstrates the trend of our net margin improvements to shareholders in the past few years.
From this page, you can see a clear trajectory of our path to profitability over the years. Our results of the whole year continue to reflect that the effects of our disciplined execution of cost control accompanied by improved operational efficiency, marking another milestone in the path to breakeven. We will continue our product integration efforts and strive to improve operating efficiency and business margin. Looking ahead, we acknowledge the prevailing uncertainties about the pace of full economic recovery. Despite these challenges, our primary focus remains on bolstering third-party revenue streams. Our commitment to improving gross profit margins, emphasizing cost control measures and enhancing operational efficiencies remains unwavering as we strive towards sustainable profitability.
